The present invention relates generally to off-highway rubber tired haulage vehicles, such as dump trucks. More specifically, the present invention relates to an improved dump body for use on such dump trucks.
Dump bodies for off-highway rubber tired haulage vehicles are typically constructed from a plurality of flat plates that have been welded together. According to common practice, dump bodies include a flat floor, flat sidewalls, and a flat front wall. Many times a cab protector, which is also flat, is attached to the top edge of the front wall in order to protect the truck cab during loading operations. A typical known prior art dump body is shown in FIG. 1.
It is known that flat plates are generally not well suited for carrying loads perpendicular to their surface. Although flat plates can be stiffened somewhat by increasing the thickness of the plates, in dump body applications merely thickening the plates is not a desirable option, as such an approach increases the weight of the dump body, thus lowering the hauling capacity of the haulage vehicle.
Accordingly, most dump bodies for the aforementioned haulage vehicles are constructed with flat plates which have been stiffened using a system of criss-crossing stiffeners on the external surfaces of each of the bottom wall, the sidewalls, the front wall and the cab protector. These stiffeners are designed to help distribute the loads carried by the dump body more evenly across the dump body structure. However, the multitude of stiffeners required again increases the weight of the dump body, and thus exacts the aforementioned haulage capacity penalty. Further, the many interconnecting stiffeners are costly and labor intensive to fabricate and weld in place, and many of the resulting connections may be subject to metal fatigue, thus shortening the effective service life of the dump body.
Accordingly, there exists a continuing need for improvements in dump body design.